Life, travel, and living beyond your expectations

Fed Up with Lunch

October 5th will always be marked as the day that Steve Jobs passed away, but it’s also the day that my cousin Sarah revealed that she is the voice behind a really popular blog called Fed Up with Lunch. For an entire year, Sarah, a speech pathologist, photographed and blogged about the school lunches being served at her elementary school, but she did it all anonymously as Mrs. Q. It started innocently enough – she didn’t have time to pack her lunch one day and ate in the cafeteria instead. She was appalled at what was being served there. So began her journey of showing the world the odd and unnatural tastes, textures, and “food” being served to our nation’s kids.

What I admire most is Sarah’s restraint in sharing her passion until the time was right to really affect change. Showing one photo of a nasty school lunch is one thing, but committing yourself to over 160 of them is quite another. Meanwhile, she told very few people that she was blogging as Mrs. Q. Online, she was a rock star with thousands of followers. In real life, she was Sarah – a working mom, wife, and busy professional. And she never let the ego as Mrs. Q-with-thousands-of-admirers out of the box until the time was right for her and her family. Amazing.

You can read more about Sarah and her passion for improving nutrition and health in school lunches at her web site. There are also some great write-ups about her at USA Today and in the Chicago Tribune. She’s also out with a new book by the same name, Fed Up with Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth about School Lunches–and How We Can Change Them!, available at Amazon.com and at B&N.